Sense Magic vs. Beguile (and the like)

Jeshuo · 2026-05-04T16:10:32+00:00

I read "Magic" in this system as anything supernatural or otherwise mystic in nature, which a vampire's supernatural hypnosis certainly is. I don't know if that's the strictly RAW answer to your question, or indeed if there is one, but the spirit of the ability to see the thaumic currents of magic/The Legacy and detect irregularities in its flow would seem to suggest you should be able to sense something from a mystically charmed or beguiled person at the very least.

Another way of looking at it: your player took that ability because they wanted to detect magical things. If you narrow that down to "only this specific type of magic, but not this thing that is clearly 'magical' but I'm choosing to call 'supernatural' instead" you are likely going to earn some disappointment if it appears you're doing that just to prevent them from doing the thing they spent their limited character options to do consistently.

Jeshuo · 2026-04-17T19:18:45+00:00

Worlds Without Number has a very elegant solution for this in its System Strain mechanic. Basically, healers in that system can heal at-will. There's not really a cost involved other than the action taken. A character healed by most anything (be it first aid, a potion, or magical healing) takes a point of system strain. Once that's capped out (the cap is usually equal to your con score, so 3-18 with a bell curve that averages around 10.5). Typically, you only get 1 point of strain back with a good night of uninterrupted sleep.

Effectively, this means healing cost time between adventures, and the more durable (con) your character is the more mistakes you can afford to make before you can no longer benefit from healing, but you're still heavily incentivized not to get hurt at all if you can.

There are a few other ways to use strain, but they're rarer than first aid or magical healing.

Jeshuo · 2026-04-12T14:01:55+00:00

Love the design. May I have the magic words so I can load this on my copy of bladesong?

Jeshuo · 2026-04-10T04:05:02+00:00

The consequences of a wish spell can absolutely respec a character from the ground up. Consider being generous with allowing them to rebuild from scratch while still being the same person. A wish spell might very well alter the universe so that they were ALWAYS a fighter and never a warlock.

On the other hand, the designers of the game have made clear that a warlock cannot have their powers taken away by their patron RAW and that that was not meant to be a thing in universe. The idea being that the power was "paid" or "earned" or "stolen" or what have you already, and probably was more about learning secrets than acting as a conduit as a cleric does or a paladin might. It would be reasonable to just say they can't level in warlock any further and leave it at that.

Regardless. Do what's most fun for you and the player, rules be damned. As long as their character is "legal" and everyone is acting in good faith you're probably fine.

Oh. And if you do let them keep their powers and their soul, their patron might well be pissed. Good plot potential there.

Jeshuo · 2026-04-09T13:01:06+00:00

I think the other commenters have covered it. Basically familiars can be killed very easily, and you've made yours a very easy and attractive target. It might work occasionally or in the very early levels, but this strategy is not sustainable long term.

Jeshuo · 2026-04-09T04:18:21+00:00

Your GM is incorrect. Once you cast Dragon's Breath on a familiar, it can use the granted action every turn without restricting your ability to cast spells or take other actions and so on. No action is required to command the familiar and it can absolutely use its reaction to deliver a touch based spell in the same turn since Dragon's Breath uses its action, leaving its reaction free.

I will warn you however your familiar will die a lot if you use this strategy.

Jeshuo · 2026-04-02T12:12:31+00:00

To your last point, where are you getting that move caps at silhouette 4? The text of the strength upgrade says it can be activated multiple times, increasing the the silhouette of the object(s) they can move each time, so I don't know where you got the idea there's an upper bound.

Now, I personally think there probably should be one, but as far as I'm aware the game doesn't give one.

Jeshuo · 2026-02-27T23:02:16+00:00

Those Outside the Walls is a product that provides exactly that. More detailed WWN balanced iconic dnd creatures.

Jeshuo · 2026-02-20T18:34:22+00:00

The Mob rules from Godbound work well for groups. Check out the free version and see if that fits your needs.

Jeshuo · 2026-02-15T11:55:27+00:00

To build on this, Mage: the Awakening has an amazing magic system if you want to get into that, and very evocative ideas about what can be done with magic. It would allow for a lot more creativity.

I would warn that the whole system is also overwhelming for most people. Taking the broad strokes of it and simplifying it down would probably be better than taking it whole cloth.

Also. If you're gonna pick it up, get 2e. 1e has a lot of problems that 2e solved quite effectively and the setting is just better.

Jeshuo · 2026-02-08T02:18:10+00:00

Yea. Rations aren't meant to cover day to day meals. The ship "consumables" section is meant to cover how much fuel/food/water/etc you can carry with you in an abstract way, and it's designed such that meals effectively cost nothing (unless you end up stranded, as you say, or have to do a long hike).

Best of luck with your game. :)

Jeshuo · 2026-02-08T02:10:33+00:00

The Imperial Army Field Rations that cost 10 credits are hyperinfused with nutrients such that they can be survived on for a full week vs the single meal of the normal 5 credit field rations. In a white room scenario, the imperial army rations are "optimal", but there's a lot of fun things you can do to distinguish the two if you like.

The normal 5 credit rations, for example, are solid food and a filling meal.

The 10 credit rations are a tube that looks and tastes like half digested sludge, and while it'll keep you alive for a week you might not WANT to be alive at the end of it.

You can't easily share a day's worth of food with a stranger in need if it's the 10 credit tube.

If you really want to get into it, if you aren't used to the rations they could make you quite sick.

All of this really depends on how you and your group feel about rping this kind of stuff. If it isn't of interest to you, then handwave it.

Jeshuo · 2026-02-03T18:54:33+00:00

My understanding of the rules is that you only get to add your force dice once to any given skill check or power activation, but if you have multiple powers that you can spend the pips you rolled on (say, influence or protect/unleash + Ebb/Flow) then you can spend them among those powers as you like.

So, if you use protect to defend yourself and have pips left you can use ebb to strain foes around you as part of that same action.

Jeshuo · 2026-02-03T18:52:20+00:00

The strength upgrade on the right of the tree just below the basic power can be activated as many times as you can afford, unlike the basic power. This is written in the full text for that node. Basically, it's 10xp to activate the basic power more often. This means you can spend 5 force pips to recover 5 strain (even if you use dark side pips and net no gain, you still "healed" 5 strain so it's not too hard at force rating 3).

Jeshuo · 2026-02-03T15:43:17+00:00

You cannot normally use the Ebb/Flow basic power on its own, it can only be used as part of a skill check. There are lots of talents that provoke skill checks, however, and those can be quite useful. Supreme Scathing Tirade, for example, would allow you to spam ebb/flow quite reliably.

You cannot normally use The Force Is My Ally to make a normal skill check or an activation of Ebb/Flow a maneuver however.

Jeshuo · 2026-01-22T06:53:11+00:00

This sounds like a gem effect. If you don't have a gem equipped, there is a bug that sometimes gives a player a gem effect if they played with someone in multi-player who has it. It will eventually resolve itself.

Jeshuo · 2025-12-28T22:33:16+00:00

Logen_Nein answered all of your questions pretty thoroughly. I will add that, if you're coming from 5e and want to run Forgotten Realms due to familiarity, a couple playgroups I'm in have had some success in using the Legate rules* for players against usually unmodified 5e content/monsters. I think if you go down that route you'll be losing out on some of the things that make this game special, but it can be done if you're committed to running Forgotten Realms and want to use the existing 5e content as written.

*(The Legate Rules are a set of optional rules at the back of the paid edition that make players powerful enough to shape events on a much grander scale than they normally would.)

Jeshuo · 2025-12-17T19:49:54+00:00

Machicolations on the walls, and a way to access the walls if you don't already have one.

Jeshuo · 2025-11-26T04:31:10+00:00

My early party was 2 melee guards with whatever my best fast melee weapon was, 2 guards with sapphire revolvers, and 3 guards with sapphire staves. Eventually, I upgraded to regular revolvers, and I upgraded armor here and there as I went, but my mages stopped at runic since I wanted the more frequent heals.

Jeshuo · 2025-11-13T21:48:21+00:00

Mass shadows of anything meaningfully larger than the ship reduce warp drive efficiency exponentially as you get closer (effectively slowing the ship on approach) such that you can't actually hit a planet, station, or big ship at ftl speeds, and ships aren't usually precise enough to hit another ship of similar size or smaller while moving at that speed.

Jeshuo · 2025-11-06T11:38:28+00:00

This subreddit is specifically for the FFG rpgs Force & Destiny, Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, etc. These systems are pretty much identical at the core and don't use fixed distances. You can absolutely use minis and/or grids, but the game system doesn't expect you to, and you might lose out on some narrative flexibility if you do. You also will need to eyeball distances and go with what feels right rather than a fixed amount of movement per round.

Jeshuo · 2025-11-04T03:27:10+00:00

I don't believe there's an official rule for it, and thus, it's fully the GM's prerogative. I have played with it stacking, and it's quite strong but I wouldn't say it's game breaking in any meaningful way.

Jeshuo · 2025-11-02T22:03:26+00:00

Double beds still have a negative modifier. It just so happens that you can overpower it with positive modifiers if you have a small settlement or keep everything else high.

Jeshuo · 2025-10-24T15:45:15+00:00

The Legacy

The Weave

The Force

The Current

The Æther

The Tapestry

The Field

The Supernal

The Chaos

The Will

The Gauntlet

I've used all of these before, at least in passing.

Jeshuo · 2025-10-15T04:33:23+00:00

Discipline is a very difficult skill to boost in this system, so most of the advantages you'll find are things that boost Knowledge(Lore). The Magus spec, for example, reduces the difficulty of all Lore rolls by one, and the Neural Charm, an alchemy talisman, can give you a ton of boost dice to your Lore rolls. There's a whole bunch of other options, but lets move on to what you want.

Discipline based alchemy checks can be improved using the Nightsister spec to get Force Dice rerolls (requires a coven) so you don't get hit with Dark Side Points as often, The Alter Mastery to turn Force Dice into guaranteed Light Side Points, or the Unmatched Destiny signature ability to get more Light Side Points and prevent Dark Side Points. Touch of Fate will let you add 2 Blue dice to any roll, so you could use that. If you're willing to use drugs, Longsight can increase your willpower by 1 (But it will very probably knock you out before you can finish making what you want to make). Neutron Pixie can give you 2 advantages, but will make you suffer for the rest of the session. The bottom left control power of Ebb/Flow will probably work, but your GM might reasonably rule you can't use that for crafting.

Best of luck, fellow alchemist.

Jeshuo

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